My Philosophy of Health

Health:

Physiological power to pursue your own personal life-goals and ends.

SHOULD I care about my health?

It is up to you! If you care for your health; that is great. If not, that is totally fine too.

Health shouldn’t be moralized

For myself, I care for my personal physique. But not everyone needs to, or should. If you’re an individual who cares for your personal autonomy; disregard what others say what you ‘should’ care for vs not care for.

What is health anyways?

The closest definition to health is ‘wellness’, from the proto-indo-european “hweh-“. But I think a better definition is this:

Health is physiological strength.

For example, to have maximal physical vigor, energy, sprightliness during the day!

Length of life

I personally believe that thinking about length of life isn’t so useful. Why? Because — let us say my personal goal is to maximize my physical vigor everyday. I do this by lifting weights, drinking lots of black coffee, walking around a lot, standing a lot, laughing a lot, dancing a lot, and fasting much during the day only to break my fast with an insanely meat heavy dinner. Who knows how long I will live? Will I live to be 50? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty? Ninety? A hundred? A hundred ten? A hundred twenty?

Furthermore — why do others care how long I live? And… why do others care for my personal health?

Meat eating

For example a lot of people say eating red meat is bad for you blah blah blah. What do they mean to say? Do they mean to say that my probability of getting cancer or a heart attack is going to increase, causing me to die at age sixty five from eating all that bacon I do everyday? And even if this were the case … why do others care how long I live?

Or let us say that others define health as how much energy and power you have during the day. I can personally attest with my lifestyle and approach I have maximal physical vigor everyday, and also a great physique. I am five foot ten inches, and I think I am around ten to fifteen percent body fat. And for my weight, maybe one hundred seventy five or something like that. I am not sure, but when I take off my shirt and flex in the mirror I love the way I look; I can see my abs, my muscles, and I can see myself growing — getting the “gains”!

Self experimentation

Certainly everyone’s body is different. For example as a male, I don’t go through a female reproductive cycle. I don’t deal with any physiological or hormonal changes during certain weeks of the month. Thus I cannot say what is best for female physiology — I have no idea, as I am not a woman.

With men as well — I am East Asian (Korean) descent. Which means I am not well adapted to consume dairy or lactose products. My friends from Europe can tolerate it far better than me (especially my Northern European friends), but I cannot. It took me lots of self experimentation to figure this out.

Your health depends on your personal goals

For example, these are my simple goals for myself:

Continually increase and augment my muscle mass
Optimally keep my body fat as low as possible, within the 10% range.
Be able to see my abs
Perceive that my muscles are growing bigger
Have maximal physical vigor during the day. No exhaustion or tiredness during the day. Ability to sleep well at night.

Beyond this — I don’t know what ‘health’ is.

Philosophy of food and nutrition

When it comes to health, it is essential we discuss food. For example, the trend is currently veganism and vegetarianism for health and moral/ethical/planetary reasons.

For myself, I am an amoralist when it comes to food and animal ethics. In other words, I have no ethics or moral qualms about killing animals, or even any qualms that eating meat might be ‘bad for the planet’. I am purely interested in the scientific and practical.

So comes the question:

Is eating meat ‘bad’ for you?

Then:

Is having a ‘plant-based diet’ truly “healthier” for you?

Ethical vs health

This is a big thing– whenever someone I know tries to convince me why vegetarianism or veganism is so good, they propose SEVERAL reasons. This is always fishy. They say:

Eating animals is bad for the planet, “inhumane”, “unethical”, evil, blah blah blah.

Note they had to cite SEVERAL reasons. One reason should be sufficient enough.

For example I have a friend who is mostly vegetarian. But he doesn’t do it for any real ethical reasons; he does it because he doesn’t like the taste of meat that much. And that is totally fine!

Or I have met this girl who became vegan purely for ethical reasons. She believed it was morally and ethically wrong to consume animals. Which is totally fine!

But once again; when it comes to food, we shouldn’t make it a game about morals and ethics. This is anti-scientific.

The science of health?

My suspicion:

(Almost) everyone who is trying to sell you a certain lifestyle or dietary approach has ulterior motives.

For example there is a recent Netflix documentary called ‘Game changers’ which proports that veganism or a planet based diet is better for x, y, z. Problem: James Cameron (producer and financier) owns a company that sells vegan protein powders. Certainly a massive conflict of interest. Also Arnold S is best friends with James Cameron which means we cannot trust his opinion either.

Who shall you trust?

Trust yourself. It ain’t even if you are wrong or right. It seems the ancient Spartans/Romans kept so healthy because they chose to take all the medicines and salves and throw it into the sea. Generally with health a ‘via negativa’ (Taleb) approach works well:

To be “healthier” don’t add any “naive optimization” stuff to your life like modern supplements, etc.

Also, trust your body and how you feel. Everyone always tells me that eating a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol is bad for my digestion, but I feel fine. I actually feel horrible when I consume dairy, and a lot of wheat products. And that is just my own body!

Trust your own body.